Faculty Collaboration Database

Balint's syndrome in Alzheimer's disease: visuospatial functions. Int J Neurosci 1990 Oct;54(3-4):339-46

Date

10/01/1990

Pubmed ID

2265983

DOI

10.3109/00207459008986653

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-0025503986 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   46 Citations

Abstract

A subgroup of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) developed Balint's syndrome, an uncommon and incompletely understood disorder of visuospatial processing. We characterized the visuospatial features of three AD patients with Balint's syndrome and compared them to three comparably demented AD patients without this syndrome. On visuospatial tasks, the Balint patients were unable to integrate visual stimuli over space. On contrast sensitivity testing, the Balint patients had significantly decreased contrast sensitivities for low spatial frequency gratings (0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 cpd) alternated at 7.5 Hz. Furthermore, the Balint patients had left visual field attentional deficits and normal hemifield P100 visual evoked potentials. In AD, Balint's syndrome involved decreased sensitivity to low spatial frequencies necessary for global visuospatial analysis, a disturbance suggesting damage to the magnocellular visual system in the occipitoparietal association cortex and, possibly, in the optic nerves.

Author List

Mendez MF, Turner J, Gilmore GC, Remler B, Tomsak RL

Author

Bernd F. Remler MD Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of Wisconsin

MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Aged
Alzheimer Disease
Contrast Sensitivity
Evoked Potentials, Visual
Female
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Space Perception
Syndrome
Vision Disorders
Vision Tests
Visual Fields
Visual Perception